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Thursday, February 28, 2008

Relative difficulty: Easy-Medium

THEME: Antagonyms (words that can mean opposite things)

This was an original concept for a Thursday theme, I thought. Not terribly tricky, but interesting and entertaining nonetheless. I did not like the central phrase (NOTHING IS BETTER), both because it is not a single word, like the other theme answers, and because it is hard to hear it as a condemnation. I understand that it could be used to describe a situation wherein nothing has improved, but it doesn't have much colloquial clout as a self-contained phrase. Anyway, that's a nit. The rest of the puzzle was just fine. Apologies for the short write-up today, and pre-apologies to tomorrow's constructor, who will also get a short write-up, and Saturday's and Sunday's constructors, who may see their write-ups delayed til Monday. We are bringing the laptop to Brooklyn, but I have a feeling that there won't be a lot of time dedicated to blogging over the weekend. I will try to post at least once, possibly with pictures. But I promise nothing.

45A: Approve or penalize (sanction) - liked this one best, for reasons I don't quite understand

55A: Easy to see or impossible to see (transparent)

60A: Entangle or disentangle (ravel) - also a fine composer

1D: Last under use or erode under use (wear) - had to read this a couple times, as "Last" kept reading like an adjective to me

13D: Remaining or gone (left)

52D: Add to or remove from (trim) - weird ... never saw this clue. Read it for the first time only just now. Other clue I never saw (thankfully) was 34A: Kobold (elf). I say "thankfully" because I have never seen the word "kobold" in my life. Maybe it was in my D&D "Monster Manual" back in 1980, but if so, I clearly have forgotten about it.

59D: Move gracefully or move clumsily (trip)

Assorted comments:

1A: Sari, e.g. (wrap)

15A: Asian princess (rani) - nice that these two are close together. My first guess for 1A was WRAP, which isn't shocking, but it means that my solving instincts are reasonably sharp. A good sign heading into the weekend.

5D: Grounds for legal action (gravamen) - this is the kind of thing I fear in tournament crosswords: I'm flying along with the greatest of ease and then Bam, crazy long word I've never heard of. Maybe I'm alone on this. I had it down to GRAVAM- and thought "well, that's wrong." Not wrong, just Latin.

16A: Dodger All-Star pitcher Eric (Gagne) - he's not a Dodger anymore. He was on the Red Sox last year - Worst Mid-Season Acquisition In The History Of Major League Baseball. Single-handedly tried to lose them the division. He was every fan's worst nightmare.

18A: Deuce follower (ad in) - I play tennis, and this still made me think a little. I blame GRAVAMEN.

27A: Belief in a life of harmony with nature (taoism) - had the -ISM and went looking for something much more esoteric.

35A: Repeated setting for Georges Seurat paintings (Seine) - the "repeated" was throwing me off, as I thought somehow the answer was a word that, when repeated, comprised the setting in questions. Like PAGO PAGO or BORA BORA or something.

50A: Deborah nominated for six Academy Awards (Kerr) - wouldn't have gotten this nearly so fast had she not been among the honored dead at the recent Academy Awards ceremony. Award for Best Dead Person went to Heath Ledger.

64A: Comedic title role for Renee Zellweger (Irene) - "Me, Myself, and Irene" - yeah, I didn't see it either.

68A: Olaf's girlfriend in Lemony Snicket books (Esme) - Sahra has never been into these. I gave her a three-book set at one point in her life, and she dipped into them a bit, but they never took. She eventually gave the books away to her friend in one of her weird fits of generosity. Of course, her first idea was to sell the books to her friend ...

45
comments:

Thought this was very easy for a Thursday. My only quibble (as a practicing Taoist) is that Taoism cannot be defined as anything! That's the message of the very first verse of the 81 verses of Lao Tse.But generally a very enjoyable puzzle, and good luck to all in the Tournament.

Well, good luck to Rex and all at the tournament... At least I've finally got the puzzle on the computer at cruciverb.com -- No wonder the mavens' times can be pared down so much, with highlighting and automatic cursor and all. It's a whole new world.

Loved today's puzzle! Excellent theme in which the clues were intregrally involved. Some nice clues for old standards, too. I methodically worked through it, ultimately finishing up in Nevada, as seems to be my wont.

Yes, Rex, KOBOLD was in your D&D manuals - all I remembered about them was they were dog-faced, or dog-like, or dog-something, and I knew DOG was the wrong 3-letter answer! I let the downs settle it.

A little bit of baseball, only one word (GRAVAMEN) that I never heard of, and pop culture held to a minimum (amazingly got KERR right off, couldn't come up with KOJAK's first name until the end, and, had I not had enough crosses to negate it, would have tried "Nurse BETTY" for the Zellweger character [don't ask.]) Great week of crosswords so far - maybe Shortz is juiced up for the tournament as well and is counting us down in style!

Good Luck to all you brave tourney-goers! Have fun and don't forget your ampersandwiches!

I liked NOTHING IS BETTER for the center of the grid. Reminded me of the letter of recommendation that isn.t E.g., "No one would be better for the job" or "I recommend X with no qualificationswhatsoever." A different type of antonym, if you will, but I thought it topped off the puzzle nicely.

but you might like to know that this image does not refer to a frayed part of clothing covering the arm -- to the Bard, the reference is to the tangled skein of sleave-silk which is unusable until separated into smooth spinnable filaments.

My take on NOTHING IS BETTER is that it was better before you did anything, but you went ahead and FUBARed it. So it's not just not improved, it's actually worse than before you did anything. Yes, maybe weaker than the others but I was okay with it.

My nit: cluing COLL as UNIV.?

My dictionary appears to agree with my interpretation, that a college can be contained within a university or can be an independent institution offering bachelor's degrees, while a university includes a graduate division. Is there some sense where they're identical?

My interpretation on NOTHING IS BETTER is that the condemnation half isn't saying that nothing has improved (emphasis on IS BETTER) but rather that to have nothing would be better than what is there (emphasis on NOTHING).

You might say it in the face of a really poorly cooked meal: [eating] nothing is better [than this crap].

Anyway, I don't know why but the whole phrase popped right out to me just off the TER at the end.

Another really fun Matt Ginsberg puzzle. (Remember he gave us that great Sunday puzzle with the up, down, lefts, and rights sending us in every direction around the grid?) Clearly Matt's got more up his sleeve than "artificial" intelligence.

Best of luck to you Rex and to all who are Brooklyn bound. Bring home the gold, or at least some good chocolate! > (air colon)

When I saw the ignominious Eric GAGNE make an unwelcome return to my Boston household (luckily this time only on my computer screen, and not the playing field), I made a point to come by and see what invectives you might hurl his way.

It sure hurt to see him clued as an "All Star" as opposed to his more recent role as the closer who just couldn't close.

I enjoyed the puzzle and all the comments. But a question occurs, implying my admiration for the complexity of this effort: have we had any other instances of as many as eleven (!) theme entries in a daily 15x15 puzzle? Has there been a daily with even more than eleven?

All of this talk about Eric Gagne -- let me just point out that I am a longtime NY Yankees fan, and you Boston guys have been sending more than the usual amount of pain my way recently. So if I get to return some of it, so much the better. :)

And as always, I'm thrilled to see my work getting such a nice reception. Thanks!

@Rex, evad, etc... You make me feel better for almost popping a blood vessel in my temple at the sight of the name Gagne. I almost threw the newspaper across the room, as I did with pillows, dishes, and whatever else was close during baseball season. Otherwise, I enjoyed the puzzle. A tough, but solvable, Thursday.

Kudos, Matt! Anon 10:47, I just did this one with 13 theme answers, though none longer than 8 letters. Rare, but possible...

SethG, I think college and university are essentially synonymous in common usage. Dartmouth has grad schools but calls itself a College.

My snag was in the SW where I couldn't let go of Nurse BETTY. Also SNARL for RAVEL, which crossed DAYS for EVES. Thank goodness for gimmes like RABE, GAGNE, and GIANTS.

Though I've never watched "Grey's", ERICA came to me immediately from reading Entertainment Weekly. I even knew that Dr. Hahn is played by Brooke Smith, who's come a long way from putting the #@%&^% lotion in the #$&%^! basket...

Really fun, new type of theme for me. Enjoyed it and appreciate the art of the construction. Nice job. I wish all of you going to Brooklyn the very best of luck. Wish I could join - but a bridge tournament beckons. Hope you will all post your results on Monday.

Dan,I had NO idea that Erica Hahn is played by the lotion girl from SotL! Thank you for that wonderful piece of trivia! This was by far my best Thursday ever - finishing it in just over 4 and a half minutes! I was very proud of myself, and that was using a pen on paper! :-)Good luck to everyone, and I look forward to reading the blogs and comments!Greg

While I enjoyed this puzzle a lot, it is a perfect example of why I dread Thursdays. Will the puzzle be part of the Thursday/Friday/Saturday set, or will it align itself more with Wednesday? One never knows until you start to work it.

This one was of the Wednesday/Thursday variety for me, although I did wind up with a blank square at the end.

Specifically, I tanked on DUOS for the Grammy answer, and thought that the french "accord" would be the acronym for some specific treaty, rather than the simple OUI. If I had gone through every single possible letter one more time I probably would have gotten it, but I didn't. Sigh.

Like others, I went with GRAVAMEN, simply because every single cross was clearly correct, but I hate it when I wind up with a word that I'm not 100% certain is correct.

Put me in the "I liked the middle answer" column, since it is the perfect example of false praise, as in "nothing at all would be better than the options I've been given". As someone pointed out earlier, this is one of the classic examples of things you can say when composing a reference for someone you hate, as in "No one would be better for this position than the candidate."

Matt Ginsebrg's comment in the "Going to Brooklyn" writeup on this blog is pretty interesting. How can a guy make great puzzles and be a keen observer of language and not do well at crosswords. I wonder if he is sandbagging? I did like this puzzle and the good at crosswords me showed up again.

I wrote in miniskirt without hesitation, but other than the SEINE and maybe a jetty I guessed a word ending in 'i' was not right. Last entry was THEO/HOCK. Ok, off to the BIGAPPLE (Matt's way to say ACPT), but I will stay up tonight and do the Friday puzzle.

While Eric's girlfriend may indeed be Esme to some, to me she shall always be Salinger's girl with love and squalor and echoes of freshman English. And reading 'Franny and Zooey' in installments on the beach at Race Point in P-town. Whatever happened to the 50's?

A fine puzzle and, I agree, more of a Wed than a Fri/Sat. Also had SKIRT, didn't mind the center answer, didn't know GAGNE had left LA, thought COLL was iffy, and had a WTF reaction to GRAVAMEN (googled it post solve to make sure I hadn't screwed up). NEOS was the last fill for me as it took a while for converts=noun to dawn. Good luck at the tourney, looking forward to the post mortem write up.

Phillysolver asked if my claim to suck at crosswords was sandbagging in preparation for the tourney this weekend.

Sandbag? Me?? :)

While I'm probably not above it, it's not true in this case! I love language, but the information in my head appears to be arranged in some sort of nonstandard way that makes it very hard for me to deal with clues other than obvious ones. I can *generate* weird clues; I just can't go the other way (at all). I have nothing but respect for all you folks that just sail through these things -- and I have absolutely no idea how you do it!

Sciency types all know KOBOLD, because of the etymology of cobalt. Both nickel and cobalt originally annoyed German copper miners, and they both received names reflecting this annoyance. Cobolt=goblin and nickel=devil.

I don't like the ELF answer. I put in "imp" originally. ELF is way too generic for my tastes.

Liked the Seurat clue for its synchronicity. When I came across the clue re Seurat I immediately thought Seine as I had just returned from seeing "Sunday in the Park with George" the Sondheim revival. I don't think I would have gotten the answer as quickly if not for that. It is a beautiful play.

Gravamen did not come immediately but once I had a few letters. It's a term I learned in law school but have not come across for a while.

Loved this puzzle, love these kinds of words, circled every "or" in the clues and enjoyed each one. "Sanction" came first for me, and then I expected to find "cleave" somewhere, which to me is the archtypal antagonym.

One of these days I'll remember that many monarchs have Roman numerals and will stop puzzling over someone like "PETERI" when "PETER" isn't long enough.

To add to Matt's point, constructing and speed solving are different skills. Solving skills come from (imo) a combination of having the right aptitude and the experience of solving many, many puzzles over time. Then there's speed solving, which is the name of the game at ACPT, but probably not a big deal for the average crossword solver.

Constructing, in my experience, doesn't have anything to do with speed. Some of the top solvers happen to be constructors (Tyler, Trip, Byron, et al.), but most constructors would probably be left in the dust by the speed demons, and by many of you folks, too.

Love those antagonyms. I was hoping that my favorite, "oversight" would turn up in the puzzle, but no such luck. Speaking of which, I'll be rooting for you, Rex, and other blog habitués who will be competing.

Since nobody has commented yet on JIANG, she is Jiang Qinq, Maos 4th wife and most notably the leader of the Gang of Four (which I could reasonably expect to see in a Fri/Sat puzzle).

Mao went through wives at an alarming rate. He had one wife committed to an asylum in Russia, another he allowed to be captured by the KMT and executed, and he married Jiang while he was still married to his 3rd wife at the time. And then there was a continuous onslaught of, essentially, concubines. Nice fella.

People seem to like these contranym things just for their own sake, so I'm taking the liberty of attaching the full list that I used when I was making the puzzle. There's likely to be some junk in here; I remember that as I built the puzzle, I had to rebuild pieces of it when a particular supposed contranym turned out to clue very poorly.

This puzzle could have been a real stinker (in a good way!) had the clues not stated the opposition so clearly.

Very tempted to enter CITATION for 45A but that was too glaringly the wrong part of speech. So what is the verb, ending in TION, that's going to fit the bill? Dwelt way to long in Northern California as a result. The Fair housing? took awhile to erect, as well. Then had to relinquish JATTE for SEINE.

Thought about INDOLENCE for Jefferson's quote, but that is perhaps too modern an interpretation. Or maybe not enough indolence produces too much ignorance?

Some one has to come to the defense of Eric GAGNE. He was phenomenal with the Dodgers (wasn't it 88 straight save opportunities converted?), with a crafty set of pitches. Could have been the screwball that messed up his arm, rendering him so hopeless of late. As effective as the best of Rivera for a couple of years. The Red Sox seemed to be using him based on that reputation, not his current stuff.

I love these theme words. Makes me giggle at the English language. Absurdly, the only place I got held up (after a brief "bald" moment with Kojak) was at Grammy winners. Duos is obvious in retrospect, but I had the D-U-_ and thought, "DUIs"? Like Amy Winehouse?

A really enjoyable, though easy, puzzle. The only place I paused at was at the very beginning with "Dodger All-Star pitcher Eric." I went to write "Gagne: but then thought (1) he's not a Dodger anymore; and (2) he sure wasn't an all-star last year. Then I figured that time references are often ambiguous in puzzles and wrote in Gagne as my first answer.

Go Matt! Go Yankees! Beautiful puzzle. Dear James F., thank you for your concern but do not worry too much about the non-native speakers doing the NYT cross word puzzle; we get a lot of practice.I hope all of you brave warriors will do well in Brooklyn. I'm hoping to cross the bridge to watch the last part of the contest, if I can still get it.

This was my favorite puzzle since the right/left puzzle (apparently the same constructor) Kudos!

Although KOBOLD was a gimme, I had never heard the word GRAVAMEN either.

The middle entry reminds me of a story: after attending a pipe organ recital which was played technically well, but displayed no pizzazz, taste, or emotion, an eminent concertmistress was heard to pay the recitalist the same sort of backhanded compliment: "You've done it again!"

If YOUVEDONEITAGAIN had been 15 and not 16 letters, I'd have written that in with no crossings.